Stupid question maybe

[stargateolympus]

I have been debating about this with one of my friends for a while, and I'm not as well versed in chemistry as he is so this is why I made this topic. I also couldn't find a topic like this through search so hopefully I'm not repeating someone else.

How do the nuclear warheads in Stargate work?

I mean I know nuclear warheads today use a combination of fusion and fission reactions to increase the yield (the largest yield I believe is 100 megatons? I think I remember reading that before but I might be wrong again) And I know that in Stargate they use naquadah to increase the yield even further, even into the multi gigaton range which is where this debate really got heated. I was thinking the naquadah sped up the reaction, thus increasing the energy released finally. He believes that nuclear warheads like the ones seen in Stargate would need to be the size of a 304 or bigger to achieve that huge yield. So I wanted to ask you guys how they work. I hope to get a good explanation that will shed some light on what the real answer is.

[Rasunda]

Well it's fusion something and a naqada warhead has about 1200 gigatons.
And a naqadria warhead is about 3000?

[stargateolympus]

Well it's fusion something and a naqada warhead has about 1200 gigatons.
And a naqadria warhead is about 3000?

well what the debate is over is how the nuclear warheads achieve such yields. Like I think that the naquadah speeds of the reactions in the warhead, speeding up a fusion reaction of some element and then speeding up the fission reaction that splits said element. That would increase the energy released on detonation but I'm not sure if that's right or not. My friend on the other hand does not think that sort of warhead could achieve a gigaton yield, let alone 1200 gigatons. So what I'm trying to figure out is how these warheads work, what fuel sources would they have to use, what does the naquadah really do in the warhead, what kind of reactions would have to take place to achieve these multigigaton yields.

[Guest750]

I think it actually reacts with the fission and fussion in order to create more energy. Naquada, after all, is shown to produce amazing amounts of energy.

Mk 12's (Gatebusters) are naquadria enhanced. Look at how much energy an overloading naquadria generator produced.

[Itzan]

Naquada is a fair dense, large element with a high energy output. It's one of those superdense elements (a refined bar of it can weigh hundreds of Kilograms) that puts out insane amounts of power. Not sure how, but it's not unreasonable that a Naquadria (which is like to Naquada, that Plutonium is to Uranium) enhanced nuclear warhead produces over 800 gigatons of Nuclear force. (it's not in the terratonne range, that does seem a bit insane).

Now, I'm pretty sure Francium, which does exist naturally in small amounts, is not only much denser than Naquada, but has be theorized to produce insane amounts of power if used in such a way. It's just to unstable and dense for any real practical uses.

Nuclear weapons have a large ring of Chemical explosives around the core of the weapon. Perhaps replacing those with the Naquada could make the explosion more deadly? You could also use some Naquada to fuel the reaction. It must burn quite fast to use up it's dense size to it's advantage, so it probably would burn faster also.

[tjoflojt]

Well it's fusion something and a naqada warhead has about 1200 gigatons.
And a naqadria warhead is about 3000?

wouldn't that like blow away half a planet? a low kiloton explotion can be seen from space, a low megaton explotion can make a large city go away. a terraton size explotion is insane

[thekillman]

its 1200MT not GT.

simplest way is a 3stage warhead:

uranium blows up allowing fusion, the fusion then blows up and then the naquahdah goes critical using the energy and neutrons of fission/fusion to fission and release the rest of the energy.

a 304-sized nukes would be hundreds of teratons.

naquahdah, in order to have such high energy yields, IMO does not only annihilate, but also IMO has hereto unknown energy particles captured within that are released upon detonation and thus create insane energy.